Interesting story. Didn't keep my 9 year old sons attention for whatever reason. Nothing wrong with the story. The book is long but manageable.

Although not really written in verse, this is novel dives into deep thoughts surrounding life, courage, and family.

Klynt lives on a farm in the Worselands. She hasn't seen her mother in a long time, since she's working in the underground to save dogs against a tyranny. Her father is a farmer and does his best to raise Klynt and keep his farm going. While Klynt enjoys her hobby of restoring artifacts for her personal museum, she's bored, especially when the government decides to close down the schools. When Robodog crosses her path, a ray of sunshine seeps into her life, but it only lasts a little while. The government keeps tightening the rules and soon, she finds herself on a journey to survive.

This book supposedly is written in verse, but this isn't quite the case. It's more like a few paragraphs of the story on each page for about half a page. The rest of the page is kept blank, while words from the last sentence are used as a title to the next paragraphs on the next page. And it continues like this without any poetic feeling. Instead, it comes across as a telling with dialogue in italics. Although I wasn't a fan of the format in the beginning (choppy), it wasn't really bad, either, and interesting enough to keep me reading the entire way through.

Fans of slow, deeper reads will like this one. There are a lot of thoughts from Klynt's end, and the book goes more through daily happenings before the 'journey' begins. Even then, it's not super fast-paced, but gives time for the situation to sink in. The problems Klynt and her family face are never fully explained, but drop in with bits and pieces to make the danger the war imposes obvious. In general, there is background information missing, and yet, this doesn't disturb the read, since it is about Klynt's courage and determination to overcome the problems. Family love is also important in these pages.

This is an original read with a lot of goodness for the right reader, but I'm not exactly sure who it is. The deep thoughts and difficult situations make it better for a young adult, but the word use and interests of Klynt keep it at a middle grade level. As an adult, I did find it entertaining, but my tween daughter wasn't quite as impressed. ( )

I love everything about this novel in verse. The plot-keeps you on the edge of your seat. The characters-distinct and believable. The language-the author creates lingo that is easily recognizable but helps ground the novel solidly in the future. Really enjoyed this one-handing it to my grandson tonight! ( )

I received this book as part of the LibraryThing EarlyReviewer program. A future dystopic story told in prose-poem form, about a girl and her robot dog. I did really like the author's use of combined words to make new words (blusterblow=wind, humdrummed = bored). But I was disatisfied with the plot. It was fine as a dystopia, but there were key plot points that just did not fully ring true for me (an underground railroad for dogs after they were outlawed?). And there were some key characters at the end whose motivations were confusing to me. The book could be a good way to introduce dystopias and prose-poems to younger YA readers, and it's a quick read. But as a parent I would read it first. ( )